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With this weekend blog, Online Conversion & Beyond opens a new category. . . Downeast Small Business. Although our main office is here in Charlestown, MA, "City Square North" is located about 75 minutes up I-95 in beautiful York, Maine. And it's from York that we'll be reporting in the months to come.

People live here in Maine because they want to. It's a great place to experience rugged coastline, sparkling water, clear air and a warm, small town environment. York converts into a family-oriented resort town for the summer season, but that's no big deal, since summer here is, in the local language, "wicked short."

However idyllic life may appear here in Maine, people still have to make a living. But the ways people make ends meet here are often very inventive . . . and this facet of business life in Maine is the focus of Downeast Small Business.

Our first business profile will be Painted Treasures, located at 264 US Route 1 in York, Maine, just north of the malls at Kittery. The owner, Phyllis Giordano, opened her shop just after Labor Day, 2004, and has begun to fill her showroom with unique, unusual and one-of-a-kind painted furniture, glassware and textiles created by Southern Maine artists.

Most days you'll find Phyllis in the workshop just off the showroom deep in the midst of "conversion," which in this case involves the transformation of furniture and other articles into works of art. Once people discovered what she can do with ordinary looking wooden chairs, tables and the like, cars started filling the parking lot. And the work goes well beyond furniture. One of the more unusual transformations that I've seen in the shop are beautiful, hand-painted walking sticks which she did as custom commissions.

Complementing the revitalized wood are complementary items in glass and art textiles. The window-lit showroom has a bright pallette, and is well worth a visit during the dim days of winter.

Early in February, I'm going to be interviewing Phyllis about her work, and what it takes to make a business go in Southern Maine. I'm sure that you'll want to hear what she has to say.

One of the joys of living in a city is being part of a great neighborhood experience. My home is Charlestown, MA, an historical theme park (think USS Constitution, Bunker Hill, Paul Revere's ride) in which real people live and work.

City people are tough and resourceful, a fact borne out by last nights gathering of the Charlestown Business Association for it's annual membership and kickoff meeting at the newly-opened Zelma Lacey House. Those who braved the shoulder-high snowdrifts, icy streets and bitter cold were rewarded with an elegant light meal provided by our hosts John Gillette (Zelma Lacey House) and the great folks at Cold Stone Creamery.

At the business meeting, led by Tom Coots, 2nd Vice Chair and Diane Grant, Board Member, assisted by Lysa Miller, Board Member (and CBA webmaster), we were given an overview of 2004 CBA accomplishments and asked for suggestions for future focus. Lynn Levesque, our Charlestown Neighborhood Council rep gave us an update on items of interest to the group, including Navy Yard development, neighborhood safety and the use of Mitigation Funds.

What I was struck by during this meeting was the vitality of business life in our "village within a city," and the social networking that ties it all together. In a day and age when email and IM have replaced face-to-face business relationship building, I was reminded of the side benefits of doing business in person, not the least of which are warmth, energy and friendship.

I had an opportunity to speak briefly with Alex Bowers and Karen Cord Taylor of The Charlestown Bridge, our new community newspaper, concerning the small businesses which flourish in the condominiums and homes in our mixed use (residential/commercial) neighborhood. I know that many of my colleagues who run businesses out of their homes were not present that evening, and only hope that they can find time later in the year to pry themselves away from their monitors, and feel the warmth of reconnection with a live and personal business community.

When we appear to stand tall in our professional peer group, it is often because we are standing on the shoulders of those who have done great work before us. I'm always reminded of my debt to those who have done loads of original research when I attend meetings sponsored by the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP).

Last week, I attended a session of the Boston chapter, led by Paul Richards of Castle Hill Consulting, LLC. His topic was "Using Focus Groups as a Competitive Intelligence Research Tool." He provided some original insight, based on extensive research, which showed why traditional focus groups were not particularly helpful for doing competitive research.

Later, he demonstrated the concept of "baselining" as a way of calibrating the predisposition of a focus group to answer questions or respond to product offerings in a certain way. By getting a fix on the participants' dislikes and likes, and creating an "ideal," at the beginning of the focus group (or as Paul would say, a CI Research & Development Group) the researcher can be much more confident that he/she can correctly interpret findings from the group session. Paul also provided some interesting insight into the role that esteem (confirmation) plays in influencing participant answers.

I've used focus groups a number of times for market-testing new products and services, and have found what was learned during these 1.5-3.0 hour sessions to be helpful in most, but not all cases. In retrospect, I wish that Paul's data-based insights had been available for use on those occasions where participant responses left me scratching my head.

Thanks to organizations like SCIP, those of us who are not afraid to face challenges to long-held beliefs are often rewarded with new, valuable insights that will positively influence our work with clients. My thanks to those like Paul who are willing to share their insights.

The big challenge, as always, is tracking the business back to its point of origin. Being able to do this effectively is what makes the rich even richer. For those who must face the financial types in our organizations, and ask for a bigger share of the marketing budget for online promotion, it's a matter of survival.

Reflecting on the week just ending, it will have to be logged as a prolonged learning experience, with interludes of client work and sleep. On Thursday evening, I joined about 70 of my friends and colleagues at an SRO meeting of the Mass Bay Organization Development Learning Group.

The topic for the evening was The Balanced Scorecard, created 15 years ago by Robert Kaplan and David Norton. The presenter was Randy Russell, Director of Research for the Balanced Scorecard Collaborative. For those unfamiliar with the Balanced Scorecard, it is a graphically compelling management tool that "provides a powerful way for organizations to develop strategies and systems that provide improvements and results in a measurable way, while highlighting organizational learning and development." It's based on the idea that "what gets measured, gets done."

After giving the group an historical perspective on the tool, Randy led the group through a strategy mapping exercise, which allowed the participants to see first hand how causal relationships can be established between ultimate outcomes (in this case a clearly defined financial goal), customer satisfaction, operational process outcomes and capability-building learning outcomes.

Rigorous testing of causal relationships is key to understanding the value of the actions that we take to accomplish our objectives. As the group that I was part of struggled to determine "what preceeded what" in the causal chain, I was reminded of the struggle that my clients face each day as they try to determine which which elements of a web marketing campaign really make a difference in driving conversion.

As we concluded the exercise, the consensus in the room was that getting clear on causality is difficult but necessary. Without an understanding of "what really causes what" (and a recognition that correlation is not causality) we may waste a lot of time, energy and money on the wrong things. The tools that challenge us to connect the dots are not just helpful, they are critical. Our challenge is to develop and test tools that can help us do this in our line of work, ones that perform as well as the Balanced Scorecard has in the domains of business strategy, operations and organization performance management.

In this column we've often emphasized the need for discipline in making the linkage between online marketing and offline sales conversion. Although much of our experience has involved persuading those with customer-facing sales roles to rigorously and accurately attribute leads, opportunities and sales to the online work that generated them, there are some leadership decisions that are equally important in making the critical connections occur.

Earlier in the week, we were pleased to be among the invited guests of Salesforce.com at a networking event hosted at the swank 33 Restaurant in Boston. In spite of the lousy weather, there was a great turnout of current users and prospects. To a person, those I spoke with were very enthusiastic about Salesforce.com's market offerings, most citing ease of implementation as a promise delivered. Having been around system implementations for most of my professional life, this is high praise.

In fact, the only source of disappointment that I heard about during the evening (from several of the attendees) was an internal problem in implementation - the unwillingness of users at all levels to let go of "legacy" systems (some of which were no more than Excel spreadsheets) and go onto a common platform. When I probed further about lead tracking - from web to close - most admitted that their ability to do so was compromised by multiple, non-integrated systems and databases. Given the support that Salesforce.com provides its users in setting up ways to track leads (from web or phone to "close") , this is a missed opportunity.

Based on my experience with clients, the issue is leadership and a need for supportive change management. People need to believe that lead tracking discipline yields benefits that are worth the cost, even if that cost entails migrating to a new, less-familiar application. It starts at the top - with good leadership role models - and a clear understanding that people, not electrons, are at the heart of good CRM, SFA and offline conversion success.

"The first Evolution of the Multi-Channel Consumer (EMC2) study provides new details of consumers' migration along a continuum, from pure online shopping to a more complex multi-channel experience that includes in-store pickup, gift registries, store kiosks, online coupons and many other resources. While this is clearly good news for traditional retailers, which are able to offer consumers a wider array of shopping and fulfillment options than online-only merchants, this trend highlights the importance of delivering a consistent experience across channels."

What does she mean by a "consistent experience?" Deeper in the article, Lauren Freedman, president and founder of the e-tailing group, Inc., clarifies consistency when she says "Today's time-starved consumer demands a convenient and consistent multi-channel experience. Options such as in-store pickup and return are widely appreciated, but retailers must ensure that store associates deliver consistently great service where online stores leave off." In other words, you must make sure that when the interface shifts from screen & keyboard to human (either face-to-face or over the phone), that the customer-facing people in your organization provide service that is superior to or at least on par with the customer's online experience so far.

What's the lesson here for our B2B clients? Simply stated, don't neglect the customer-service training (or interpersonal-skills-focused sales training) when you are making investments in improving the online experience. If latent conversion coupled with multi-channel behavior typifies the buying cycle in your industry, invest in your people. Chances are, it will pay for itself many times over.

One of the keys to understanding in the world of conversion is development and consistent use of a common vocabularly. One of the terms that pops up regularly in our discussions is "latent conversion." According to the folks at Overture, deferred (aka latent) conversion is "a sale, sign-up or similar customer activity that does not occur during the site visit immediately following the initial user search, but does occur within 30 days after the search."

While this time parameter makes sense in a retail environment, we would contend that latent conversion may occur months after the first site visit in the B2B buying cycle. Since the typical cookie lasts approximately 30 days (enabling Overture's Conversion Counter to do its job), a different type of discipline (and toolset) will be necessary to identify and track latent conversion in the long-cycle sales environment.

During coming months we'll be discussing some of the ways that firms have and can address this issue.

Jamie correctly led us past keyword optimization (getting the right traffic for the right cost) and into the "softer" area of conversion optimization. (And when I use the term "softer" I mean more difficult to pin down, not of less value.)

Jamie presents three target areas for improvement of conversion, namely:

Usability

Relevance

Persuasiveness

and provides us with some excellent resources for doing so.

While I'm in full agreement with what he has listed, I would add an additional target area which has special relevance for our B2B clients, specifically, offline conversion tracking discipline. When the buying process leaves the online domain, we often lose our ability to determine which language, targeting choices, offers or presentation adjustments moved the prospect to action. Without enlisting the whole sales organization in the effort to find out "where the winning leads came from" our efforts to causally link online efforts to the money tend to fall apart.

To those like Jamie who are putting the effort into conversion improvement, way to go - but please don't forget about the special needs of your B2B audience.

Wish We'd Said It First

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.